Guerrillas of Grace

The Rev. Dr. Theodore W. Loder served for almost thirty-eight years as Senior Minister of one of Philadelphia's most unusual churches. The First United Methodist Church of Germantown, named "The Oddball Church" by the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, is a thriving, ethnically-mixed metropolitan congregation of over one thousand members. Loder's social activism grows out of a long history of involvement in social causes. He marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in the sixties, opened his church as a Public Sanctuary Church, co-founded a job-training program for high school dropouts, a nonprofit housing renovation corporation, and an ecumenical consortium to rehabilitate abandoned houses. He also serves on the Philadelphia Mayor's Advisory Commission for Children and Families. A cum laude graduate from Yale Divinity School, with an honorary doctorate from Willamette University, Dr. Loder currently serves on the National Advisory Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.